A System Fault when Trying to Open Some Help Files with winhlp32.exe

[victormmr]

Dear Wine developers!

I have found a flaw in the work of the Wine environment when trying to open some
help files (files having .hlp extension) with the winhlp32.exe program. These
help files belong to the "Marriage" card game program. Every time I try to call
the help from the "Marriage" program menu I get the message that
the winhlp32.exe program caused a system error and was terminated. Here is
the text of the error message, sent to the standard output, I see when I'm
calling winhlp32.exe program from the terminal, specifying the help file I need
to open as parameter:

Code: Select all

mike@debian:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Marriage$ wine winhlp32 MARRIAGE.HLP 
wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x00000000 at address 0x7f9f65c0 (thread 0009), starting debugger...
Unhandled exception: page fault on read access to 0x00000000 in 32-bit code (0x7f9f65c0).
Register dump:
 CS:0023 SS:002b DS:002b ES:002b FS:006b GS:0063
 EIP:7f9f65c0 ESP:0032f960 EBP:0032fa98 EFLAGS:00010246(  R- --  I  Z- -P- )
 EAX:00000000 EBX:7fa0af2c ECX:00000083 EDX:00191ec3
 ESI:00000083 EDI:0019230d
Stack dump:
0x0032f960:  00000010 00000010 00000000 d5ec7400
0x0032f970:  0032f990 7f8c3f40 7f801dcd 7fa0dae0
0x0032f980:  7f9e0000 7fa0c5e0 0032f9f8 7f8031c3
0x0032f990:  00000f00 7fa00000 7f7f0002 7f800001
0x0032f9a0:  00191ec3 0032f9dc 0032f9d8 00191dcc
0x0032f9b0:  0032f9d0 00030039 0032f9e8 00191eb0
Backtrace:
=>0 0x7f9f65c0 in winhlp32 (+0x165c0) (0x0032fa98)
  1 0x7f9fc34a in winhlp32 (+0x1c349) (0x0032fce8)
  2 0x7f9ff330 in winhlp32 (+0x1f32f) (0x0032fdd8)
  3 0x7f9ee2f1 in winhlp32 (+0xe2f0) (0x0032fe78)
  4 0x7fa01464 in winhlp32 (+0x21463) (0x0032feb8)
  5 0x7b463e32 in kernel32 (+0x43e31) (0x0032fed8)
  6 0x7b4661ac in kernel32 (+0x461ab) (0x0032ffd8)
  7 0x7b463e3e in kernel32 (+0x43e3d) (0x0032ffec)
0x7f9f65c0: movzbl	0x0(%eax),%ecx
Modules:
Module	Address			Debug info	Name (14 modules)
PE	7ac10000-7ac23000	Deferred        riched20
PE	7b420000-7b5d0000	Export          kernel32
PE	7bc10000-7bc14000	Deferred        ntdll
PE	7efa0000-7efa4000	Deferred        winex11
PE	7f040000-7f048000	Deferred        oleaut32
PE	7f160000-7f164000	Deferred        rpcrt4
PE	7f1f0000-7f218000	Deferred        ole32
PE	7f340000-7f343000	Deferred        usp10
PE	7f380000-7f384000	Deferred        imm32
PE	7f630000-7f634000	Deferred        advapi32
PE	7f6b0000-7f6b7000	Deferred        gdi32
PE	7f7e0000-7f8c7000	Deferred        user32
PE	7f9e0000-7fa04000	Export          winhlp32
PE	7ffd0000-7ffd4000	Deferred        version
Threads:
process  tid      prio (all id:s are in hex)
00000008 (D) C:\windows\system32\winhlp32.exe
	00000009    0 <==
0000000e services.exe
	00000024    0
	00000021    0
	0000001c    0
	00000018    0
	00000015    0
	00000014    0
	00000013    0
	00000010    0
	0000000f    0
00000011 winedevice.exe
	00000019    0
	00000017    0
	00000016    0
	00000012    0
0000001a plugplay.exe
	0000001e    0
	0000001d    0
	0000001b    0
0000001f winedevice.exe
	00000027    0
	00000023    0
	00000022    0
	00000020    0
00000025 explorer.exe
	0000002a    0
	00000029    0
	00000028    0
	00000026    0
System information:
    Wine build: wine-4.0 (Debian 4.0-2)
    Platform: i386 (WOW64)
    Version: Windows 7
    Host system: Linux
    Host version: 4.19.0-11-amd64

It seems a null pointer dereferencing takes place when the program is running
(though I'm not sure this is the case).

The system my Wine environment is installed on is Linux Debian 10 Buster.

An archive with the help files, which caused the problem, and an archive
containing the "Marriage" program installer entirely are attached below.
The help files are in the archive marriage_help.tgz, and the whole installer
is in the archive marsetup.zip.

Please help me to solve this problem. I don't know, whether it is caused by
wrong configuration of my Wine prefix or it has aroused due to some bug
in the Wine components themselves.

Victor.

[dimesio]

Code: Select all

    Wine build: wine-4.0 (Debian 4.0-2)
 

That version is almost two years old and no longer supported. Start by upgrading to at least the latest stable release.

An archive with the help files, which caused the problem, and an archive
containing the "Marriage" program installer entirely are attached below.
The help files are in the archive marriage_help.tgz, and the whole installer
is in the archive marsetup.zip.

There were no files attached, which is good, because your post would have been disapproved if there were. Do not attempt to upload files that you do not have the legal right to redistribute. It is permissible to post links to legal downloads.

[victormmr]

Code: Select all

    Wine build: wine-4.0 (Debian 4.0-2)
 

That version is almost two years old and no longer supported. Start by upgrading to at least the latest stable release.

I installed this version of Wine from the standard Debian package repository of the stable branch by simple apt command line tool. I constantly update my Debian installation, so I have the latest versions of all the software, available in their stable release. I know their packages contain slightly outdated software, so I would willingly setup the latest stable version of Wine from your site, although I'm not sure there won't be any compatibility issues, caused by interaction of new Wine software with old Debian libraries. Anyway, please give me a link to a detailed instruction, which describes the process of installation of the fresh Wine release from sources or binaries to popular Linux distributions. I'll try to install it.

An archive with the help files, which caused the problem, and an archive
containing the "Marriage" program installer entirely are attached below.
The help files are in the archive marriage_help.tgz, and the whole installer
is in the archive marsetup.zip.

There were no files attached, which is good, because your post would have been disapproved if there were. Do not attempt to upload files that you do not have the legal right to redistribute. It is permissible to post links to legal downloads.

The "Marriage" program is a freeware, that means it is distributed free of charge, although its source was never disclosed, nor it was ever distributed under any free licence. It seems this program was an advertisement project in an attempt to promote Preferans card business. So hardly its authors would have prevented its free distribution, it would have been unprofitable for them to hinder this program spreading. I have looked its documentation, but I could not find any licence agreement, it's like this program was provided with no licence. It has no protection and requires no activation. The program is old enough, it seems its last version was released in 2005, 15 years ago. Three URLs are indicated in the program documentation as its official download sources:

• pref.bn.ru/marriage
• www.marriage.ru
• www.casinogames.ru

None of the sites operates, all these sites are dead. You can download the program from https://www.softportal.com either at link

• https://www.softportal.com/software-3519-marriage.html (version 2.44)

or at link

• https://www.softportal.com/software-142 ... riage.html (version 2.3)

but obviously it's not its official download source. So I think there would be no offense, nothing criminal, if I attach these files (a set of help files, which caused the problem). If you object, you can just delete these attachments. The installer can be downloaded under the link

• https://www.softportal.com/software-3519-marriage.html

[dimesio]

Anyway, please give me a link to a detailed instruction, which describes the process of installation of the fresh Wine release from sources or binaries to popular Linux distributions. I'll try to install it.

https://wiki.winehq.org/Debian

[victormmr]

One more question.

Is there a way to install the last stable release of winetricks script as a package to Debian Linux? I guess the corresponding package from the official Debian distribution is not fresh enough. On the other hand if I download winetricks from Github and simply copy it to the Linux bin directory, it won't be updated by the apt update / apt upgrade commands, so I'll have to update it manually each time from Github.

Is there an external winetricks .deb distribution, whose address I could add to the /etc/apt/sources.list file and install and update this script automatically as a package through apt command line tool?

[spoon0042]

Not that I'm aware of, but I could be wrong. Even the 'unstable' package was last updated in April. Best practice is to put it somewhere like your home directory then run 'winetricks --self-update' to get the latest version. (Or it's possible to do that as root, or as a normal user that has write access to /usr/local or something but I assume you're the only one running wine on your computer.)